


Skin Shallow, Bone Deep

by springgreen



Category: Mars - Fandom
Genre: Body Calligraphy, Chromatic Character, Chromatic Source, F/M, Post-Canon, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-25
Updated: 2007-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-03 06:51:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/springgreen/pseuds/springgreen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spoilers for the entire series. Includes work-safe image.</p><p>These were the memories he didn't have of Sei: growing up, growing different, growing apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skin Shallow, Bone Deep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tou-chan](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Tou-chan).



> Written for Yuletide 2007.
> 
> Thanks so much to Edo no Hana and Vom Marlowe for the beta, and particular thanks to Vom Marlowe for her awesome painting!

These were the memories he didn't have of Sei: growing up, growing different, growing apart.

* * *

Rei stared at his own reflection in the mirror and stuck his tongue out at it. The modeling session had just hit three hours, and Kira showed no sign of stopping. His ass was numb. His neck was sore. His legs itched to move. He remembered the myriad reasons he had hated posing for Sei—the unnatural stillness, seeing himself on paper, the knowledge that Sei was projecting himself onto Rei. Worst of all, not moving meant time to think. He had succeeded in avoiding just that for an entire week, but three hours of sitting had undone his efforts, had him reliving his friend's wipe-out on the tracks. He could still see the paramedics pulling the burned body out from the wreckage, but the images had nothing on the smell. Oily smoke, scorched rubber, charred flesh... he disliked knowing the stench of death so intimately.

"Rei!" Kira protested. "You're moving!"

Rei stuck his tongue out at her. "Can I see it?"

"Not yet," Kira said. "I told you, it's a surprise." Rei rolled his eyes, even though she had responded the same way every time he had asked. He wanted to see what had her requesting him as a model for the first time in a few years; she knew he hated it, even though he had declared he didn't mind doing it for her.

He slithered down the mirror till he lay on the floor, groaning in relief as he stretched stiff muscles. Kira padded over and poked at his ribs with a toe, then yelped as he tickled her through her socks. He grabbed her legs, pulled himself to his knees, and buried his face in her jeans. Detergent and paint and cotton, home and life and Kira, and he was glad he was not at the track.

Rei closed his eyes to the memories of death, let the faint rustle of cloth and Kira's small sigh replace the sounds of wheels screeching and metal crumpling.

Her breath was warm across his face as she lightly kissed his eyelids, his nose, the corners of his mouth. Her fingers left cold traces on his cheeks, and he imagined she painted his face with the scents the turpentine and graphite.

* * *

He had just discovered motorcycles; his clothes and skin and hair were stained with oil and reeked of gasoline. As he barged into their bedroom, Sei turned his head toward the door and wrinkled his nose.

"You smell too," Rei told him.

He flung himself onto Sei's bed, collected his limbs and sat up. They were face to face, knee to knee, hand to hand. His were callused and stained black; Sei's fingertips were a mixture of charcoal, ultramarine, vermilion, and burnt sienna.

Rei closed his eyes and sniffed. For the first time he could remember, they were two.

* * *

"Hold still," Kira said. "I'm working."

"Working?" Rei asked incredulously. "This isn't working!"

"Yes, it is." Kira reached over to dip her brush in ink. As she carefully wrote on his chest, the brush stroked his nipple, and he bucked. "Be good. I'm practicing my calligraphy."

She shifted back and cocked her head, seemingly unaware that she had moved so she was straddling his hips. He moaned at the pressure. Kira only put brush to skin again, and he squirmed at the cold ink and the tickling of the bristles.

"It's a new style I'm trying," she continued. "Brush control is very important." The brush slowly circled another nipple, never over, only around and around until Rei grabbed her hips and ground up. Surprised, Kira let the brush tip slide over his nipple, eliciting another moan.

She leaned over and whispered in his ear, "Stop"—nibble—"distracting"—nibble—"me." Her hot tongue licked at his earlobe, then she bit down. His hands scrabbled in her hair as he tried to sit up.

"No," she said, pushing down on his shoulders until he stopped trying to get up; his head fell back as he let her take over again. They had long ago discovered that Kira's moments of freezing up during sex would disappear when she was on top. Rei wasn't sure if she liked the control or if it were simply the different position, but he snidely noted that either way, her fucktard stepfather was a missionary man through and through.

"I think I'll try sumi-e next." He wasn't sure what her brush was writing anymore; all his concentration had gone to his groin. Kira was slowly circling her hips as she continued to write on his chest, the alternating pressure and lack of driving him crazy. "Only you're not cooperating."

She scooted back. He nearly cried out at the loss of contact, until he realized she was unbuttoning his jeans. He lifted his hips so she could pull his jeans and boxers down, the cool air tantalizing against his cock. She straddled him again, only now with nothing under her skirt, rubbed herself up and down his cock, but never let him inside. He knotted his fingers in the flowery fabric at her hips, trying to pull her down, to get more of her, until finally, she relented and tantalizingly slipped over him oh so slowly. He arched up uselessly; she was controlling the pace and the angle, and he knew she loved watching him disintegrate, knew she wouldn't let him come until he had lost every smidgen of control.

Afterward, he lay quietly and trembled as Kira washed off the traces of ink, each rough lick of the towel almost too much for him. She dabbed at his scars, even though he had told her the area around them was numb. Today, with the heavy reminder of mortality, he understood the care she took with his mementos of pain. Two jagged slashes in his stomach: their wedding present from Masao. An angry red line running up his thigh: the latest broken bone. A scar across his left eyebrow, dark patches at his knees and elbows, more lines across his chest. He couldn't remember how he had gotten all of them now; there were too many skids and falls, too many spiderweb cracks on his many helmets. Kira leaned down to nip at his collarbone.

That one, he remembered.

* * *

"Rei? Rei! Are you all right?" Sei dashed up to him.

Rei was sprawled across the street, his new motorcycle on top of him. He tried putting some weight on his arm, then cursed at the pain.

"Get it... offa me! Fuuck, this hurts."

Sei gingerly attempted to lift the motorcycle. The pressure on Rei's ribcage eased, then returned as Sei's grip slipped.

"Are you trying to kill me?"

By the time Sei had found their guardians, Rei's jaw was sore, teeth clenched with the effort to not cry in pain.

Later, they learned he had escaped with a broken collarbone. The doctor told him he was lucky, but Rei didn't think so when he learned how long he had to keep his right arm immobile.

Sei helped with the bandages, the light touch of fingers identical to his on the break, and whispered.

"Our body, Rei. You broke it."

* * *

By the time Rei had parked and found the restaurant, everyone else had already ordered and begun to eat. This was a good thing: less small talk for him, and he could steal some of Kira's food before his own order arrived. Accustomed to his late arrivals, Kira slid her dish of linguine with salmon and peas over.

"I know it's got peas, but at least it'll be something," she said.

He had a seat at the corner of the table, and Kira sat by his side, so that only left the person across from him to socialize with. He'd already forgotten who she was, and from a quick glance around the table, he was surprised how few people he recognized. A haircut here, more wrinkles there, and everyone in work clothes. He looked down at himself, tried to assess how different he was from his high school self, and very briefly wondered how Sei would look, had he lived.

After glancing at the menu, he sloppily kissed Kira's ear and asked, "Seafood spaghetti okay?" In a whisper, he continued, "Who's the guy sitting by Tatsuya? Do I know him?"

"Seafood fine. I'll just give you my squid." She lowered her voice. "That's Fujieda's fiance. I think we've met him before, but he's probably forgotten, so you're okay."

"Good. Anything else?"

Kira filled him in on the latest happenings of old high school classmates as he picked peas out of her linguine. He inhaled the pasta too quickly and choked when she reached the long litany of marriages, engagements, break ups, and babies; he couldn't picture some people as engaged, much less married with kids. Then again, he supposed everyone had thought that of him and Kira back in the day.

Kira had already returned to her conversation with Harumi when his order arrived. He doled out a non-tentacly portion to her, then settled back to eat, speckling the table top with tomato sauce. He should probably talk to the person sitting across from him, but he was starving, and he couldn't think of anything to say. She would probably want to squeal about his career, and while Rei normally enjoyed the ego-boost, he found he preferred the comforts of home over the track in the past few weeks.

As the noise died down and the dessert menus were distributed, Tatsuya got up from the far side of the table and walked over, baby strapped to his chest. Thank god, somebody he could talk to.

"Hey, we haven't seen you for a while!" Tatsuya said.

"Yeah. It's been busy." Rei pulled over a chair as a welcome.

"It's good to see everyone together again," Tatsuya said, motioning at the ten-some people seated. "Michiko and I don't get out a lot these days, thanks to her." Tatsuya motioned at the gurgling Emi.

"Weird, though." They sat in companionable silence.

Rei reached over, ran a finger through the fuzz on Emi's head. She drooled, then attempted to wave an arm at him. Rei let her grab his finger. He watched her, fascinated by the way her eyes didn't quite follow his movements, by the mouth that already looked like Tatsuya's, by the promise of future intelligence and unformed personality.

"Wow. She's so... new," he said, embarrassed to be parroting every single person who had ever seen a baby.

Tatsuya grinned at him, wonder in his eyes. "Yeah. I know."

Emi shoved Rei's finger into her mouth and chomped down.

"Ew!" he said, trying to wipe the drool off on her bib. Emi began to bawl. Rei eyed Emi, whose face had turned from smooth mochi to puckered umeboshi. Everyone in the restaurant had turned and glared at Tatsuya, who was already walking up and down with Emi and whispering, "Shhhh. Shhhh, it's okay."

"Well, it was probably time for us to head back anyway," he said to Rei. "At least this time we got through the main course."

"We'll have to go out for a beer sometime," Rei said.

"Yeah, right. Maybe when she's in preschool."

As Tatsuya left, Rei thought about seeing his own face in someone who wasn't Sei.

* * *

He had no first memories of Sei; all his early memories were of them both. Even the family albums confirmed this. From birth onward, every picture of Rei was also a picture of Sei, and vice versa.

When Kira spent time flipping through his old baby pictures with his father, she had pointed at several photos and asked which one he was.

Neither Rei nor his father could tell her. His father noted that moving, they were immediately identifiable. But stilled in time, without the distinguishing marks the years would write on their skins and bones, they were mirror images.

* * *

"I still can't believe Tatsuya's married with kids. It doesn't feel like it's been—what, eleven? Twelve?—years since you guys graduated from high school. And now everyone's married! With kids!"

"Mmmm." The sounds of brush on canvas never slowed. He knew Kira was listening, but only partly; in this room, she focused on art first and second and last.

"Should we have kids?" he asked, after a few minutes of silence.

He heard Kira put her brush down. "Sorry, what?" she asked.

"Kids. I thought we were always going to have some."

"Now?"

"Well, I don't know. I mean, I'm turning thirty-one in a month. And time isn't stopping."

"Could we talk about this later?" she asked.

* * *

In the days and nights after their mother's death, Rei and Sei shared a room and sometimes a bed. They did not touch; the sound of breath alone was enough to ward off nightmares. If Sei left in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, Rei would wake, breath caught in his throat. He could feel thumbs pressing into his trachea, fingers circling his neck. The phantom hands would only disappear when he could hear Sei again, reassure himself that Sei was still breathing, the steady inhale-exhale an anchor.

Later, hands changed to rope. Later still, he would choke even when Sei was there, even when they lay side by side, noses touching and faces mirroring each other. He would inhale as Sei exhaled, stealing the breath of the twin their mother did not hurt.

When Sei's breath finally stopped, Rei was so gone from grief that he forgot how their mother had strangled him.

* * *

Rei climbed between the sheets after brushing his teeth, surprised to see Kira already in bed.

"Did you already finish painting for the night?" he asked.

Kira put down the catalog of art supplies. "Yeah," she said. "I couldn't concentrate."

"Oh," he said, feeling vaguely guilty. He wasn't sure what to apologize for, though.

They both sat for a minute in silence, not touching each other beneath the covers. Kira picked at her fingernails while Rei systemically cracked all his knuckles.

"So," Kira said, "kids?"

Rei cracked another knuckle. Without looking up from his hands, he said, "I was just thinking about it. I thought we always wanted kids?"

"Yeah. I mean, I do. I just... I don't know if I do right now."

"How come?" Rei asked. He had always imagined this conversation going differently: Kira would be the one who wanted kids, he would be the one to be persuaded.

"Well," she began, then trailed off. "Well. I don't know, Rei. It's so much time. And money. And I know your father will help, but I don't want to rely on that. And I have so little time right now.

"And..." she stopped. She finally looked at him, though through bangs and eyelashes. "There's so little time for my art even now," she whispered.

He didn't say anything, embarrassed and angry and guilty he hadn't thought of that in all the moments he had picturing. In his imagination, it had been Kira at home while he talked racing with motorcycle companies, Kira preparing meals while he played with the baby, Kira arranging... whatever things needed to be arranged.

"I know it's selfish of me," Kira continued. "And I know we're both thirty, and that there's never going to be a good time. I just... Rei, someone asked me to do an exhibition at their gallery. And things have been selling. Not much, but a little more each year."

"You're not selfish," he said. "That's really great news."

"And can we survive if I quit my day job?" she asked.

"I was thinking," he said slowly, "of quitting racing."

"What? Are you serious? Why?"

"I'm getting old," he said. "My reflexes aren't as fast as they used to be. And I'd rather go out like this than in a body bag."

"But you've always wanted to race..."

"And I did. For over ten years, too." He grinned at her. "I loved it. I'll always love it. And I'll probably look for work consulting with motorcycle makers; I can't stay away from the track. But I want to be here too, with you, and maybe with a family."

"Oh," she said. He couldn't see her expression. He felt he should say more about the recent press of mortality, the niggling worries that all the deaths he had escaped so far would finally catch him.

"Just think about it?"

"All right," she said.

* * *

Ever since he had been stabbed by Masao, Rei saw Sei's shadow at every crash. At first, he had wondered if he were still suicidal, if seeing Sei meant he had retained his not-so-hidden death wish. It wasn't something he was about to ask Kira, much less anyone else. But Sei's presence didn't beckon like it had after the stabbing.

Instead, Sei's ghost had felt like company, like an old friend trying to comfort him. Sei stood by him as he watched colleagues and friends black out, break bones, and lose limbs. And it was Sei who kept him company the day he crashed on the track, Sei who watched over him as he lay under his smoking wreck of a bike, about to pass out. Unlike the time he had broken his collarbone, this Sei couldn't lift the bike off or call for help.

And so, a little over a week ago, he was shocked to see not Sei, but Sei's dead body. It had appeared on the race course as his racing buddy wiped out, bike and rider crumpling against the wall in flame. He knew then that his friend had died on impact, and he was glad. Fire was a particularly nasty way to go.

He remembered staring at the vision of Sei's bloody body lying there by his friend's charred corpse, remembered thinking momentarily that it was himself, not Sei, lying there.

But he no longer knew what his own dead body would look like, and he had little inclination to find out.

* * *

"I'm home," Kira called. "Rei?"

A few seconds later, he strode over to the entryway. "How about a year?" he said instead of the usual "Welcome home."

In answer to her puzzled look, he continued, "To see. To see how I do, not racing, to see if it makes things easier for you to paint. And then see how we feel about kids?"

Kira slowly turned to lock the door, then took off her shoes and found her slippers. "Are you sure?" she asked. "I can manage, really. And you're right, we aren't getting younger..." He kissed her quiet, grabbed a few of the grocery bags and her hand, pulled her into the kitchen.

He remembered what his father told him, how Kira had gone in and asked his father to let him keep racing, how she had said he was magic on a bike. His father brought it up every time he mentioned that Rei Kashino the racer was his son. Rei thought of how she kissed him good luck before every race, even though she was the first person they contacted when he fell. But most of all, he pictured her with brush and blank canvas, seeing him like no one else did even as she was in a world of her own, eyes full of the possible and not the cold facts. And he thought of empty expanses of road, nothing to win, no one to beat, just him and his wheels and the horizon stretching before him.

"Yeah," he said. "I'm sure."

* * *

Soon after their marriage, when Kira and his father were still familiarizing themselves with each other, his father had asked Kira about Sei's art. She had replied slowly and carefully, always delicate around his father's guilt and Sei's memory.

"He had beautiful technique," she had said. "I love his lines, the way he layered color, the detail in all his sketches."

"But?" his father asked, reading her pause.

"Well, his portraits of Rei are wonderful, but he hadn't taken the time to complete backgrounds or to learn composition. And... I think he needed time. Time to experiment with new media, with different subjects, with more styles, time to find his own passions, time to live outside of his art. His art feels very enclosed." She laughed self-consciously. "Mine's the same way."

His father had nodded, eyes somber, possibly imagining long neglected brushes, dusty easels, and forever blank canvases.

Rei could only see the paintings Sei had finished; he still chafed at being trapped in Sei's self-portraits, his own visage overwritten by his twin's. He had no desire to see an older Sei's work.

* * *

Once the reception began, he would be sipping champagne and wishing for beer while Kira socialized, but for now, the gallery was theirs.

"Are you finally going to show it to me?" he asked as she led him forward, blindfolded.

She kissed him lightly on the nose and untied her silk scarf.

"About time..." His voice trailed off as he caught sight of the canvas.

It was him, resting against a mirror, shirt off, jeans baggy and torn. And in the mirror was Sei. Not Sei as he had been in death, clad in school uniform and scarf, but Sei as he might have been, had he only lived. This Sei was collected and sure, jeans dark and unwrinkled, hands clean and unmarked, skin smooth and unscarred. Rei once again felt the unstated comparison and the old anger.

He nearly snapped at Kira, but then he looked again. The man in the mirror was no more Sei than Sei's old portraits were of Rei; Kira had deliberately kept the reflection idealized, but also unreal. A few brush strokes outlined the expression, more still suggested posture and pose. In contrast, Rei could see every wrinkle and fold in his jeans, the beginnings of laugh lines on his face, the hint of motor oil and grease on his hands. Rei knew his body well, checked it daily for injury and pain, but Kira knew it better. She had painted skill in his hands and joy in his eyes; the scars on his body looked weathered and worn, not angry.

He was flesh and bone: skin marked by her touch, muscle molded by the road, heart ripped and scarred and healed by thirty years of life.

* * *

These were the memories he didn't have of Sei: growing different, growing apart, growing into themselves.

* * *

  



End file.
